Quotes, Sayings, and Proverbs

About Paul Tillich

Paul Johannes Tillich was a German-American Christian existentialist philosopher and theologian. Tillich is widely regarded as one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century. Among the general public, he is best known for his works The Courage to Be and Dynamics of Faith, which introduced issues of theology and modern culture to a general readership. Theologically, he is best known for his major three-volume work Systematic Theology, in which he developed his "method of correlation", an approach of exploring the symbols of Christian revelation as answers to the problems of human existence raised by contemporary existential philosophical analysis.

Feast of Monica, Mother of Augustine of Hippo, 387 Augustine shows clearly the religious character of sin. Sin for him is not a moral failure; it is not even disobedience. Disobedience is a consequence but not the cause. The cause is: turning away from God, and from God as the highest good, as the love with which God loves Himself, through us. For this reason, since sin has this character -- if you say "sins", it is easily dissolved into moral sins; but sin is first of all basically the power of turning away from God. For this very reason, no moral remedy is possible. Only one remedy is possible: return to God. But this of course is possible only in the power of God, and this power is lost. This is the state of man under the conditions of existence.